


Spiral of Shame

by 1833outboy (phancon)



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Blow Jobs, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Hiatus angst, Infidelity, M/M, Mutual Pining, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-13 05:10:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16010951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phancon/pseuds/1833outboy
Summary: Pete and Patrick start having sex.They go through girlfriends and boyfriends who do and don’t know, and their band gets bigger, and they make records together, and they have sex, and they don’t talk about it. It’s secret, it’s theirs, it’s just sex.Pete tries not to read into it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> the first fic i've posted in years, and my first ever bandom fic. please be gentle.

Pete and Patrick start having sex.

It begins, as most questionable decisions do, with alcohol. Pete has forgotten who or what the party was originally for. A birthday? A charity thing? It could be a damn funeral for all he knows or cares. It doesn’t matter; point is, there’s an open bar and they’re celebrating.

_From Under the Corktree_ is actually becoming something of a success – like, a big success – and Patrick is fucking _glowing_.

“We’re rock stars, Ricky,” slurs Pete against Patrick’s shoulder. He’s long since lost count of the amount of drinks they’ve had between them. “We’ll rock the world, hey. Didn’t I tell you?”

Patrick laughs – or giggles, maybe, it sounds more like a giggle. They’re heading back through their hotel – an actual, proper hotel with beds, not a crappy carpet floor or a smelly van – arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, supporting each other up like they’re in a three-legged race. Andy and Joe are still at the party as far as Pete remembers, laughing and flirting with attractive people. Pete doesn’t want to be with any of the half celebrities and off day journalists back there though, he doesn’t even really want to go with any of the beautiful women he’s seen eyeing him up; no, he kind of just wants to order room service with his best friend tonight.   

They lean against the door for a moment. “Is this my room or yours?” Patrick asks once Pete has managed to work the key card. Fourth time’s the charm.

“Ours,” Pete murmurs against Patrick’s neck as they almost fall through the door.

Patrick finds that hilarious for some reason, laughing almost hysterically with his whole body as he untangles himself from Pete and falls back onto the bed. Pete joins him, laughing just as hard. The ceiling is kind of spinning and if he thinks too hard he’ll remember how much he’ll regret getting this drunk tomorrow, but it doesn’t matter now. He turns his head, away from the ceiling and toward Patrick, who’s lying on his back beside him. Patrick seems to sense Pete’s eyes on him because he looks back, giggles subsiding into a warm smile.

Pete grins, rolling over so he can lean into him, arm over Patrick’s stomach, chin above his shoulder. Their faces are very close; their noses touch. He was going to ask Patrick something, something about food maybe, but now he’s forgotten what exactly and it doesn’t seem important anymore.

Patrick giggles again. “You smell like tequila,” he slurs.

His breath is warm against Pete’s mouth. “You smell of whiskey,” he replies.

Pete has an impulse. Soberly, even his messed up and splintered mind might fight this particular urge. It’s a dangerous one, even for him. Spinning drunk, however, Pete leans into it; poking out his tongue, he licks the smooth skin between Patrick’s nose and lips. “Taste of it too.”

Soberly, Patrick would pull away here. Soberly, he would rub his mouth and maybe curse and tell Pete he’s a gross asshole. Pete knows this; he knows too much about Patrick. But drunk Patrick does not do that. Drunk Patrick doesn’t move, he smiles, warm and teasing. Then he leans forward and touches his tongue between Pete’s parted lips. “You do too,” he murmurs, lips touching Pete’s.

Pete’s not sure who turns it into a proper kiss first, but seconds later they’re making out sloppily, messily, hungrily, like magnetism has pulled their lips fully together. Pete grasps a hand at the back of Patrick’s neck, feeling his pulse throb under his thumb.

He’s kicking off his pants before he realises what he’s doing, shrugging off his jacket, pulling at Patrick’s tie.

Soon they’re all skin and sweat, stripped down to their birthday suits and touching what they haven’t before now. Saying nothing, they fumble, more from the drink than because they don’t know what they’re doing. There are fast hand jobs that Pete would be embarrassed about if he were sober. They don’t talk, except for stuttered moans. Pete comes too quickly and Patrick takes a little too long after, but Pete’s too full of needy desperation for this kind of touch from Patrick ( _Patrick_ ) to care. It doesn’t feel awkward in the moment, even though it should. Pete’s body crawls around Patrick’s ten minutes after he licked Patrick’s top lip and he falls to sleep faster than he has done in years.

The next morning, however, it is awkward.

Pete wakes up quickly, jolted wide eyed by a dream he can’t remember, but he doesn’t move. He’s naked on top of the covers, and his head feels like someone has repeatedly smashed it with a hammer.

It all comes back to him in waves.

Pete’s nauseous, and it’s not the hangover. For several long seconds all he can think is, _I’ve fucked up one of the best things that’s ever happened to me_.

Beside him, Patrick is also still. He’s awake, Pete can tell. There’s no warm, light breaths or unintelligible tales from Patrick’s dreams in the form of small mumbles. Pete knows all the patterns of Patrick’s breaths. Or he thought he’d known all of them anyway, but last night he learnt a few new ones, so there’s probably even more he’s missing.

Pete swallows. His throat is dry. “Patrick?” He blames the hangover for the crack in his voice.

Patrick moves, shifting in place, and Pete lets himself turn to look at him. Patrick is squinting, tousle haired and frowning, naked and pale. He’s obviously tired, aching and worried, a bit of a mess; he’s also fucking perfect. “My head,” he whispers.

“Yeah,” Pete agrees, feeling the pulse of his own skull dully. He doesn’t know what the right or wrong thing to say is and wants to let Patrick lead, but Patrick is just staring at him, an odd look on his face. Nervous, unsure… hopeful? Pete had expected embarrassment, anger, something dismissive, but that isn’t happening yet.

“We were pretty drunk,” Patrick whispers after a moment.

“Yeah,” murmurs Pete again, feeling lost for anything else to say; a rarity he’s not used to.

Patrick clears his throat then, looking down at himself as though just noticing his bare chest, stomach and soft cock. He covers himself with his arms, makes himself a little smaller; Pete wishes he wouldn’t. 

“I— Dude, I…” Pete starts, then trails off. He’s not entirely sure what he wants to say. Patrick watches him, lying still now, hunched into himself.

Instead of talking, Pete decides to take a risk. He’s clinging to the small bit of hope he sees on Patrick, the lack of anger. He clings to that with his life and leans across to bury his head into Patrick’s shoulder, closing his eyes. “You want me to leave?” he mutters. “You can tell me to stop. I’ll go.”

He begs Patrick in his own head too, _Just please don’t tell me I’ve wrecked that important, so important, thread between us. I’ll die._

Pete delicately puts his arm around Patrick’s body, half ready for it to be flung off again.

Instead, Patrick clings back. “I don’t want you to go,” he says hoarsely. He strokes Pete’s jawline, the short stubble that sits there, and Pete holds him, feeling safe, feeling home.

Patrick says, “We should do it again, maybe,” very quiet. “It was fun. It doesn’t have to mean anything, right?”

Pete feels something tighten in his chest. He nods.

“It’s just sex. We should do it again,” Patrick repeats.

**

Pete agrees, and they do it again. They go through girlfriends and boyfriends who do and don’t know, and their band gets bigger, and they make records together, and they have sex, and they don’t talk about it. It’s secret, it’s theirs, it’s just sex. 

Pete tries not to read into it.

**

Three years after those first clumsy hand jobs, Pete is parking his car in his usual space outside Patrick’s house, more than a little spring in his step as he grabs the two coffees from the passenger side and heads toward Patrick’s front door.

He’s excited. It’s the first time he and Patrick will be alone together for weeks. They’ve been working on music with other producers and occasionally with Andy and Joe, or else taking long weekends with family and other friends. They’ve barely had room to talk about anything outside of their music, let alone do anything else.

Pete is more than ready to feel Patrick against him, almost shaking with it. Sometimes he feels like an addict for this fucking kid.   

And yes, okay. At this point? It’s fucked up. It’s fucked up that they’re doing this while Pete is... not single. It’s fucked up that Pete aches for it so much. It’s fucked up that he has the beginnings of this perfect life and he’s risking it essentially almost every single time he goes to work.

Most of all, it’s fucked up how much he keeps falling in love with Patrick. More and more each time they see each other. More and more and more—

And oh god, he wishes he didn’t. This is just sex, just sex to Patrick. Every second he gets to taste Patrick, gets to fill him up, gets to see all the ins and outs of his best friend, every second is some sort of paradise. But it’s a paradise mucked by the constant iteration at the back of his mind: this _isn’t the same for him._

Even that is something he’s learnt to ignore over the years though, and even if it bothered him enough to want to give this up, he’s not sure he’d ever have the strength. 

Pete’s well aware he’s a coward.

“Guess who bought coffee,” he announces as he lets himself in. He heads to the kitchen and finds Patrick leaning by the fridge, hands in his pockets.

“Hey,” says Patrick, voice too even, and Pete can tell immediately: something’s not right. Patrick won’t meet Pete’s eyes; he’s looking past him, at the wall, at the window, down at the floor, anywhere but Pete. There’s something written on his face. Pete can’t place it.

There’s a dirty glass next to a bottle of whiskey on the kitchen counter.

“Bit early for that, isn’t it?” he says, nodding to the drink and trying to laugh a little. Maybe it’s not too early for many people – it’s almost 2pm, Pete’s started drinking earlier before – but he knows Patrick would have gotten out of bed little more than an hour ago. It’s practically mid-morning for him. 

Patrick shrugs as Pete drops off their coffees next to the empty glass before going over to Patrick and putting his hands on his hips, pulling him close. Pete can smell the whiskey on him, but even amongst the signals in his head telling him _something’s off_ he’s still revelling in finally being this fucking close to Patrick.

He kisses the soft slight stubble of Patrick’s jaw, the bristle of his sideburns, breathing him in. “I fucking missed this,” he mutters.

“Yeah,” Patrick says softly, leaning into Pete’s lips for only a moment before he pulls back, and there it is again. His avoidant gaze, weird tone. He’s close again a second later though, pressing their foreheads together.

Pete wants to ask what’s wrong, something _is_ wrong, but then suddenly Patrick’s kissing him hungrily, hands holding his neck tight enough to make swallowing difficult. He bites at Pete’s lip, brushes his tongue over Pete’s teeth, and it’s every bit as desperate as Patrick usually is after weeks without it – without _this_ , touching skin and swollen lips and frantic hands. 

“I need you to fuck me,” he says hoarsely against Pete’s lips and, well, Pete can’t deny Patrick that, ever.

They move, leaving the coffees abandoned on the kitchen counter. In between hurried kisses and desperate moans, they shuffle into the guest room, because they always go in there when they fuck at Patrick’s house. It’s devoid of anything personal, for the most part. It’s separate. Like they should be. Like they’re not.

Pete slams shut the door with his foot, though it’s unlikely anyone’s about to show up without due warning. No one’s as presumptuous as to barge into Patrick’s house without knocking except Pete. 

Patrick is pushing, shoving, grinding them toward the bed, tugging at Pete’s shirt and pulling back from Pete’s red raw lips briefly to pull it off between them. They yank at clothes between desperate kisses, Pete’s cock beginning to push painfully against the confinement of his skinny jeans before its freed, ripe and dark red against Patrick’s pale thighs as he presses hungry kisses against Patrick’s collar bone.

Patrick groans, his own hard cock digging against Pete’s hip. Pete’s hand moves over Patrick’s thigh, down below his back, patterns he’s traced more times than he can count, to the warm hole of Patricks ass. “Lube,” he mutters, eyes moving to the drawer at the bedside table.     

Patrick groans, but reaches out a hand, moving further up the bed and jostling Pete as he grabs a bottle of KY and a condom from the second drawer. He falls back against the pillows and bends his legs as Pete moves quickly to grab the bottle from him, wetting his fingers with the lube and pressing fingers below the course strawberry blond hairs of Patrick’s balls, into the warmth of his ass.   

Pete presses their bodies together as his fingers, one, two, ease their way into Patrick’s hole. Patrick crashes their lips together, shuddering a little under Pete’s weight as his hand strokes over Pete’s cock. Pete groans against Patrick’s mouth, the light strokes teasing but not enough. Even in bed, Patrick knows Pete’s buttons exactly. He presses in fingers, two, three, deeper, and Patrick whines, thrusts, and palms his hand around Pete’s cock fully in response, stroking his thumb over the head.     

Patrick uses his other hand to guide Pete’s mouth to the curve of his neck and Pete presses gentle kisses against his soft white skin. Patrick’s breath hitches against the fingers that squeeze deeper into his ass and he mutters against Pete’s cheek, “No— Leave a mark.”

Pete pauses, lips caressing his skin, fingers stroking the inside of Patrick’s ass and mind full of the hand stroking his dick. They don’t leave marks, normally. It makes things less… complicated. Pete looks up, wanting to look into Patrick’s eyes, questioning, but they’re closed, still avoidant. “I can’t—” he begins.

“It’s okay,” Patrick insists, his hand moving up the length of Pete’s dick in a swift motion. “Do it.”

Groaning against the touch, Pete does. He sucks, mouth and tongue digging a crevice into the clear skin on Patrick’s shoulder, sucking through teeth and tasting sweat, listening to the low moans that come from the back of Patrick’s throat. When he pulls back, a dark wet mark is visible against the pale skin below his collar bone.

Pete’s dick is grinding against Patrick’s light thrusts now, desperate for more. He pulls his fingers away from Patrick’s ass, murmuring against Patrick’s marked skin, “Gonna fuck you—”   

“Wait.” Patrick pulls himself up, brushing their lips together briefly, hungrily. “I wanna blow you first,” he moans.

“Fuck yes.”

Before Pete can do much of anything, Patrick is pushing him off and onto his back, leaning over with lips kissing the head of Pete’s cock in seconds. There’s no teasing prelude with Patrick, he’s wrapping his thick lips around Pete’s length before Pete can lift his head back up. Pete sucks in half a breath, warring fireworks stuck somewhere in his brain as Patrick’s tongue does magical things along the length of his cock.

Unintentionally, Pete thrusts further into Patrick’s throat, and Patrick – by now well practised in Pete’s movements, intentional or otherwise – doesn’t splutter, just pulls back a little before moving his lips forward. It wasn’t nearly so elegant the first time Patrick took Pete’s cock in his mouth; Pete recalls spluttered apologies and choked desperation from a nervous twenty-one-year-old who’d never sucked a dick before in his life. Now… Now they’re old hands. Now Patrick’s lips over Pete’s cock feels right. It feels like they were both born to do this for each other.

Patrick’s eyes are closed _(why, why do they have to be closed_ ), his mouth hot against the hard skin, his hands tracing the warmth of Pete’s ass. Pete’s dizzy with it, can feel himself getting closer to the brink. _PatrickPatrickPatrick_ —

“Patrick, stop, I’m— I’m gonna—”

Patrick’s pulls away, and Pete feels the absence like a bruise, his cock dripping with precum and aching like hell. “Not yet you’re not,” Patrick murmurs through half a smile, eyes now on Pete’s hard and leaking cock. He falls backward, head back on the pillow and legs spread while Pete’s mind and body scramble, back toward him, grabbing the condom left abandoned by the pillow. 

He wets his fingers again with the KY and Patrick helps him cover the condom over the length of his cock. Pete feels like he’ll come undone from the very thought of his cock being in the general area of Patrick’s ass.

He always likes to look into Patrick’s eyes while he eases himself in; call him a gullible romantic, call him a hopelessly infatuated idiot, but he’s always loved being able to see Patrick’s ocean tide eyes look back at him, soft and warm and sweet. Today though Patrick’s eyes are closed, hidden from Pete’s. He groans, “Patrick,” as he fills him up, tight against his cock, trying to urge Patrick’s eyes open with his voice.    

He moans and thrusts, gentle at first, as Patrick keeps his eyes closed against Pete’s prayer.

“Harder,” hisses Patrick instead, “Don’t you dare hold back. Give it to me.”

Pete feels himself slow instead, like a stumble. It’s not like Patrick hasn’t wanted it rough before, it’s not like he hasn’t begged Pete to do it faster, harder, more, through a knowing smirk and wanting eyes. But there’s an undercurrent of something else here, and no smirk, only a bitten bottom lip and dark eyes that finally open, but only stare up at the ceiling. Dark eyes that _won’t fucking look at him_.

“Patrick. Are you—”

“Fuck, Pete, _yes_ , I’m fucking sure,” Patrick’s voice is full of desperate need, layered in irritation, and Pete is never strong enough to deny him anything. He doesn’t know why this feels different, but he decides he doesn’t want to know right now.

He thrusts harder, deeper, hand looping around Patrick’s cock as he groans low at the back of his throat. Patrick’s hand covers Pete’s on his cock, his other hand on his own thigh, clutching tight enough to bruise. Pete feels like he should tell Patrick to stop pinching his skin like that, it’s gotta hurt, but his brain is stuck on the fireworks going on below his waist and he’s not sure he’s able to form sentences that go beyond Patrick’s name anymore.

Patrick lets out a low moan with each hard thrust, whispering things that only half make sense. Pete hears his own name more than once and feels the half-sung sigh of it wash over him as he comes, waves of ricocheting pleasure causing him to cry out, call out Patrick’s name back like a returned entreaty.

And Patrick still won’t look at him.

“Patrick,” he gasps, eyes desperately seeking blue, and he wants to convey everything racing through his mind in that one name. _Look at me. See me. Love me please. PleasepleasePatrickplease._

Patrick seemingly can’t hear him, eyes still closed, hand over dick.

Pete pulls out and lets himself breathe against Patrick’s chest for a moment, but Patrick still hasn’t come, is still stroking his own dick, hands clawing at Pete’s ass. So Pete looks up, hands moving back to help.  “Do you want—”

“No— Blow me,” Patrick says, breathless, and his voice is odd. It’s raw from something other than the build, the desperation for release. There’s something almost solemn in his tone, clutched under the words.

It makes Pete pause, his brain catching up with him again. ( _Something’s not right_.) “Patrick,” he starts.

“Please,” Patrick says, chokes, grinding up against Pete’s hand desperately. “Pete.”

That name is all Pete needs; it sends his brain back several notches, tightens his chest, frees his throat.

He’s moving before he even realises, tongue lapping over Patrick’s balls hurriedly, mouth hurrying up the base of his hard cock. Patrick groans, grabbing a fistful of Pete’s hair, and it’s like it’s supposed to be. Nothing’s wrong. Nothing was ever wrong.

Pete takes Patrick into his mouth slowly, already feeling how close Patrick is, from the thrusting of Patrick’s hips and beautiful pain as Patrick pulls against Pete’s scalp.

Patrick moans desperately, obviously willing Pete to go faster. Pete takes it in until he can taste Patrick almost at the back of his throat, lips and tongue sucking around the taste while he listens to deep groans and moans, to stuttered breaths. He loves the noises Patrick makes, could listen to everything that comes out of his mouth all day on repeat. He’s a hair puller too, something Pete never knew he wanted until the first blowjob he gave him three years ago.

The pressure against Pete’s scalp suddenly tightens considerably, and he pulls back in time to feel Patrick come, shaking, over the skin below his navel and Pete’s chin and neck. Pete looks up with a smile, hoping desperately to meet Patrick’s avoidant eyes.

Patrick is still shaking, and it takes Pete a moment to realise that it’s from something other than the ecstasy covering his soft stomach and Pete’s chin. His eyes are closed tightly, his neck tipped back against the pillow, Adam’s apple bopping against his clear throat. Then his hand covers his face and Pete hears something undeniable; the sound of a muffled sob.

It hits him square in the chest. Like someone has just kicked him hard right between his ribs. His throat tightens and it’s hard to breathe. A hot mess of confusion and panic swirls in his gut.

Patrick is _crying_.

“Hey,” he says softly. “Patrick, what…” He stops. A horrible thought comes to him. “Did I hurt you?” He replays everything back in his mind, searching for any signs of pain from Patrick. Even as he says it though, he realises that doesn’t make much sense. Pete has never seen Patrick cry from physical pain, and he surely knows Pete would never mean to hurt him, right? Pete has seen Patrick take a guitar hard to the face (Pete’s bass, accident, he felt guilty for a week), and he swore and shouted (after passing out, _that_ was terrifying) but didn’t shed a tear. He cried when they watched _The Notebook_ , though. He cried when he visited Pete in the hospital that time after Best Buy. He cried when he broke up with his ex.

Pete wishes Patrick would just _look_ at him. He moves up, away from Patrick’s now soft cock, up until they’re face to face. His arms wind around Patrick, forehead inches from his, knees balanced either side of his hips.

Patrick just shakes his head in answer to Pete’s question, turning himself away a little. He rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand, taking a deep breath through his nose, and when he looks up at Pete (still not looking into Pete’s eyes, looking down at Pete’s jawline, his neck, anywhere but Pete’s eyes, even while Pete’s eyes desperately search for Patrick’s), Pete can see he’s steeled himself again, tucked it back, swallowed it down. 

Patrick shifts under him, gently pushing Pete so he slides to Patrick’s side with arms still wrapped around his chest. 

When it comes, Patrick’s voice is steady, “You’re married now, Pete.”

Pete winces, feels his gut jump to his chest painfully. He tries not to let the betrayal show, but it’s hard; it’s like Patrick has punched him, hurt him on purpose. They don’t talk about that. About what they’re technically doing here. It’s one of their rules, unsaid but understood. He can’t understand why Patrick is breaking that, now, while they lay naked and soft, post orgasm. That’s not fair. 

It was not a question, but Pete nods in response anyway, trying not to grimace again. He’s married. He doesn’t want to think about it right now, but he is. The wedding was last month. Patrick stood with him at the alter while Ashlee walked toward them both, looking beautiful. Every time he sees her after an afternoon with Patrick, he feels it, the gnawing guilt, eating him from the inside, slowly splintering the frays of his already cracked, shitty mind.  

“You’re going to be a dad,” Patrick continues; a second blow, even harder than the first because this, now, here, this is one of the very few places he doesn’t want to think about that at all. He can’t think about what he’ll be for his child while he’s doing this. What kind of dad he’ll be. He can’t. His head jerks in something close to a nod, but now he doesn’t want to look at Patrick either, his eyes just as avoidant.  

“What are we holding on for anymore?” Patrick whispers, so quiet that if he hadn’t turned away, his ear turned to face Patrick’s lips now, Pete’s not sure he would have heard.

“What,” Pete says, finally. It’s not really a question, more the start of a sentence he can’t finish. He shifts beside Patrick, feeling the slick mess of sex still awash between them. 

“We were going to put our life on hold. But you can’t anymore. And I can’t keep—” Patrick’s voice has stopped being steady; it’s almost vibrating. Pete searches Patrick’s face now; his wandering eyes, can’t look away for long. He watches Patrick swallow heavily, like it’s difficult. “I can’t do this anymore, Pete.”

Pete forgets to breathe. He feels hallow. Stripped down from more than just his clothes; his skin, his bones, everything, it’s all coming undone. “What are you saying?”

Finally, for the first time all day, Patrick’s ocean eyes meet Pete’s. They’re bright, shining, desperate, painful. “You know,” he says in that same whisper. “Please...” The rest goes unsaid, but Pete knows what Patrick’s saying – he’s been horribly well versed in a language only the two of them know for almost seven years now, and he knows now that that’s why Patrick wouldn’t look at him until now. Patrick is saying, _Please don’t make me say it. Please understand._ He’s saying, _Please know I’m sorry._

But Pete can’t give any of that to him now. “What?” he chokes, and suddenly he’s pissed. He’s angry, he’s so fucking angry, he feels like ripping something apart, just like he’s being ripped apart. He shouts, “ _What_ , Patrick?” loud enough that he might be worried about neighbours hearing if he were calmer.

Patrick doesn’t flinch, but his eyes close, breaking that contact again – Pete didn’t think anything else could be ripped from him, but there it is. He suddenly wonders if he’ll see those eyes meet his again tonight or tomorrow or ever, or if that’s it. It feels like something final.

“Please,” Patrick says again, begs desperately, tone full of a kind of sadness Pete refuses to identify. “Pete—”

“No,” Pete cuts across him. “Say it. Fucking say it.”

Patrick opens his eyes. They’re wet, shining with hurt, sadness, anger, guilt – guilt for which part of tonight, Pete can’t say. “I don’t want to _do_ this with you anymore,” Patrick chokes out in a throaty whisper. “I’m— I’m sorry.”

Pete suddenly can’t bear to be this close to Patrick, and he tears himself away completely, the loss of contact somehow constructing his chest even more while he moves to the bottom of the bed, urgently grabbing the closest boxers and yanking them on. They’re a little loose around his hips, probably not his. He doesn’t feel like he’s taking in enough air, but he can hear his own breath come in and out quickly through his nose while he mindlessly grabs for his jeans under the bed.

“Pete…” Patrick says, and Pete’s always loved how his name sounded in Patrick’s lips. Now though, the sound just makes him feel sick. “Pete, you’ve got to see why—”

“I do!” Pete snaps back, whipping himself round to face him. “You don’t think I don’t feel fucking guilty? You don’t think I don’t want to die every time I see her—I see _her_ , and I think of _you?_ Of what we… _”_ He can’t finish.  

“Then you’ve got to know this is the right thing to do!” Patrick says, and he’s closer than Pete expects now, has moved back over to the bottom of the bed, sitting on his knees, naked and shaking.

“What, like you’ve cared about the _right_ thing to do for the past three years?”

“That was before you were married!” Patrick spits back harshly. “Before you had a kid on the way. That was when I thought you actually meant the things you said in here.”

“I did mean it!” Pete shouts, feeling something burn in his gut. “I did!”

He meant them all. Every joking “ _we’ll live together again one day, then you’ll see my worst”_. Every, “ _I’ll shout I’m fucking you off the fucking stage”_. Every _“come with me tonight” (not her)_. He meant them, even if a lot of the things he said were a pipe dream he wasn’t sure Patrick would ever share entirely. He did mean them.

“I _did_ …” he repeats.

“You meant it then. You can’t now,” says Patrick gently, looking down at the bedspread.

Pete’s chest is aching so much, he’s going to die from it. “This kid…” he chokes, voice trembling and catching. “I have to— to be with Ash, I… This kid, this baby, I—”

“I know,” Patrick says softly. “I get it. But I can’t be what you want now. I can’t do that to… to you, and me, and… It’s too much now.”

“You’re being the bigger person,” Pete says bitterly. “Okay.”

“Don’t— Don’t fucking do that. Don’t act like I should just be rolling over and licking your balls now you’re married, Pete, fucking married. Do you have any idea what it felt like to stand there – to stand there and watch you…” Patrick’s expression crumbles. Pete knows it’s the guilt. The guilt was more manageable for Patrick when his thing with Ashlee was less likely to last. Now Pete’s promised his life to someone, and the extra guilt isn’t worth the sex.

“I know, I know, I fucking know we’re scum, okay? _I’m_ scum.”

“Pete.”

“But I can’t— Patrick,” he reaches to cup Patrick’s cheek, the trembling touch burning his insides, “I can’t… lose you.”

Patrick leans back, pulls away. “Pete, _please_.”

“No, you don’t fucking understand!” There’s something swarming inside him, something desperate for release. This isn’t the moment, this can’t be the moment – but it is, he can’t stop it anymore, not now, anything to stop Patrick from doing this, _anything_.

Patrick starts, “Why do you have to hold on so fucking hard—?”

Pete finishes, “Because I fucking _love_ you!”

Then he stills.

Pete has said those words in _one day_ s and _soon_ s, in after sex cuddles and clinging hugs, but never out loud like that, in a way that can’t be denied in any way. He always used their language – or maybe just his own language, because Patrick never seemed to truly understand – but not ever one others could hear. 

Patrick stares at him, and for the first time since they met seven years ago Pete can’t decipher a single thing about the expression on his best friend’s face. Seconds pass.

Patrick doesn’t say it back. He doesn’t say anything.

Of course he doesn’t… Why would he? Why would Pete even let that fractured splinter of hope in?

Pete hides the devastation behind a loud scoff at Patrick’s wide eyes, struggling onto shaky feet and barrelling for the door when he realises how much he can’t look at his unreadable face anymore. He knows he has to get out fast, now. There’s a tornado inside of him and he needs to be away from Patrick before it escapes and wrecks them both forever. He can hear his name being called as he makes it to the front door, but he adamantly ignores the voice.

It’s not until he’s starting up his car, reversing out of Patrick’s driveway too fast through a blur of tears, that he realises he hasn’t put on a shirt, socks or shoes. He doesn’t care, and drives barefoot, too fast, struggling with the urge to scream. 

He’s shaking. He can still see Patrick’s soft wide eyes, the hurt and tears when he told Pete what can’t happen.

He can’t read into it. He speeds. He screams. He tries to forget.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been sixteen months.

It’s been sixteen months, and things have gone sideways.

Pete’s felt tilted off balance for a long time, ever since that afternoon of painful eye contact and forgotten coffee, but if he had to pinpoint it, he’d say it got _permanently_ knocked on its axis several months back.

Patrick sat the band down in the middle of the fucking tour, right there in Pete’s hotel room, and told the three of them what he wanted.

“It’ll just be— just for, I don’t know… as long as we need.” He was leaning back near the TV, watching as the three of them as they sat on the bed opposite, staring at him. Like he was their fucking manager in a meeting or something. “It’s just a bit— you know. It’s like— like we’ve been going on for so long like this, I just think we need a…” He stopped, shifting in place. “We need a break,” he said. “A… longer one. To focus on other things, for a time. Other… music. Like. We can explore other musical avenues, you know? Um, separately. I don’t know, I just think it’ll be good… for all of us to— for us to separate ourselves from Fall Out Boy for a while.” 

“We were going to take a few months off before the next record…” Andy pointed out slowly. “You want – more than that?”

“More than a few months,” said Patrick, nodding. “I mean, I just – if you guys want to keep doing this for a while without me, I suppose you can…”

“Can what?” asked Andy, sounding a bit incredulous.

There was no answer to that. There’s no Fall Out Boy without any one of them. And they couldn’t do shit without Patrick, not without turning into something else entirely, even if they wanted to – which Pete knew he didn’t want, would never want, ever. 

“I— I can’t do this anymore— _we_ can’t do this anymore. If we keep going like this, we’re going to break up for good, okay?” Patrick said, shaking his head. “For real. We’ll hate each other. I mean, for fuck’s sake, when was the last time you felt like… like we used to?”

None of them answered. Pete couldn’t remember the last time it felt like it did: fun, worth everything, like they were making something people loved.

Andy didn’t agree with any of it at all and said so. Joe was unusually quiet, and when Andy asked him if he thought Patrick was right he shrugged, which was answer enough. Pete wanted to scream. And he did, later. But at the time he sat, stony-faced, while Andy tried and failed to talk Patrick out of pressing pause on Fall Out Boy.

Until Andy turned a confused gaze to Pete, and said, frowning, “Do… you agree with this?” It seemed half an accusation – _did you two talk about this already?_

Pete was still staring at Patrick, who along with Andy turned his full attention onto Pete. Patrick’s stubborn expression briefly collapsed into something more vulnerable, almost afraid. Pete refused to read into that. “Fuck,” he muttered, and shook his head. Then he got up and left. It was his hotel room, it should be _them_ who were leaving, but he needed out. He needed to be gone. He ignored Andy’s voice calling after him.

He wanted to do lines and forget. He wanted to run away and never look back at any of them. He wanted to turn the world into something that resembled his own torn feelings. He couldn’t do any of that, so he locked himself in the lobby bathroom and punched the wall and screamed into his bloody hands.

And despite popular belief, Pete’s not a complete idiot. It’s not like he can’t see what Patrick sees, necessarily. They’re all tired. They’re all fractured. And he knows they all think that _Folie_ didn’t get what they wanted; it didn’t get what it deserved. 

Pete likes to blame the fact that their fighting had no follow up sex for the way he felt through the whole arduous process of helping write that record, but the fact that he and Patrick didn’t have sex at all while writing for their first few albums kind of goes against that theory.

They’d always fought, of course, but this time they fought worse than even the very early days when Patrick was such a young and arrogant teenager he would throw his phone or Pete’s notebook or an empty coffee cup, anything he could grab, just fling it at Pete, eyes searing with anger at some line or chord they disagreed on. Pete’s not sure if it was arrogance or something else that made Patrick so vehemently against so many ideas Pete put forth for _Folie_. Not that Pete was any better, he can admit that. He fought back just as hard, if not harder. But Patrick was often crueller about it, there were punches thrown, and he usually won their arguments; maybe his heart had been in it more than Pete’s had.

Unlike their usual fights, these ones didn’t end in laughter several hours later. They didn’t end with finding something magical to fuse their differing ideas together in a blaze of glory they’d never seen coming. They didn’t even really end with a slow conflicted release of, “okay, you were right,” on either end.

They certainly never ended in contact, unless fists count.

No, they ended with Pete red hot and furious and unbelievably frustrated, silently convinced he hated Patrick. They ended with Patrick cold and livid, and probably hating Pete.

They’d written a couple of songs before the day everything changed, and it had been okay – the usual arguments, the usual butting of heads. But afterward… it was stupid to think things wouldn’t change like that, that it wouldn’t change everything about them.

Pete remembers walking into the studio a few days after the afternoon everything changed. Patrick determinedly ignored everything they’d said; everything Pete had said. Slotted himself haphazardly back into the friend and bandmate slot, apparently refusing to see how the way they’d been friends for years had been irrevocably changed forever. Pete buried everything and ignored the way his heart stung fiercely in his chest whenever they made eye contact.  

It's not that they’re not still _friends_. They are. They’ve been fighting more, all of them have – much more, even after the record had been made, during the tour when the usual limit is persistent teasing and instead they’re getting into heated arguments about the fucking setlist and why the kids are booing and who’s going out drunk on stage. But between those bouts of high tension Pete and Patrick still laugh over dinner with Andy and Joe, even if it’s a little subdued. They still quote movies back and forth while eating pizza on the tour bus, even if it’s far less often (six months, Pete hasn’t heard any of Patrick’s _Terminator_ impressions in six months). There’s still “ _You okay?”_ and “ _Can’t sleep?”_ and “ _don’t listen to them, they’re full of shit, I promise I love how the record came out,”_ even if those conversations are over quick and brushed aside, not always entirely honest.

Instead of sexual tension, their friendship’s full of some sort of noxious tension. Or maybe they’re the same thing, always were the same, just with a different outcome. Pete doesn’t know anymore. He’s forgotten what it’s like to have a conversation with Patrick that isn’t anxiety and frustration inducing.

Knowing that Patrick and Joe want a break has left Pete in a bad place, because despite how much being friends (just friends) with Patrick hurts so much he wants to tear him up sometimes, despite how much he just kind of hates Patrick (or something close to hatred), Pete still finds he doesn’t want to be apart from him either. Ever.

Even though he could admit it would be good for Patrick to get away from Pete’s toxicity, has felt it for years now. Then again, Pete’s always been selfish like that.

The truth is Patrick said _new musical avenues_ and all Pete can think of is Patrick standing in front of another band, singing words Pete won’t recognise. It makes him want to break things.

**

They do one of their last shows beside Blink 182 in Madison Square Garden and it’s electric, raw, more emotional than Pete can bear. He gets his hair shaved on stage, feeling like he’s being ripped to pieces, while Patrick sings about _when these open doors were open ended._ He knows the others must sort of hate him for this. He doesn’t find it in him to care right then; he needs this. It started with a dumb bet with Mark Hoppus, but it’s still cathartic, somehow. It helps.

He swallows something back, something violent, as the last chord is played and the crowd erupts.

When they walk off stage together several minutes later Pete feels opened up. Andy moves away from all of them before any one of them can say a damn thing, and Joe isn’t far behind. Patrick says and does nothing; his head down, eyes glassy. Pete goes into himself and doesn’t pay any of them any attention again until they’re driving back to the hotel together in more silence.

For the most part Pete hasn’t taken anything harder than pot or booze since Bronx was born, somehow. Days like this he’s not sure how.  

As soon as he can he’s disappearing into his hotel room and focusing on not crying. He’s gotten good at it.

Not an hour after leaving the hotel foyer, there’s a knock on his door.

Of course it’s Patrick.

Pete struggles on something to say for a moment. They’ve all been playing the silent game so well today, it seems a shame to break it. But then he smells something, faintly. “You’ve been drinking, dude,” he finally says, surprised.

Patrick doesn’t ask before walking into Pete’s hotel room; there was a time that would have done the opposite of bother Pete. Not so much now, and he frowns. Patrick clears his throat, looks around Pete’s room like he’s not sure what’s led him there. “I’ve never felt more sober, honestly,” he mutters.

“Uh. There’s something, I guess,” says Pete, still frowning. Patrick may not be drunk, but he still must have been drinking. He smells of whiskey. Which is odd; Patrick doesn’t drink much anymore, not alone anyway, not since he stopped a while back after realising he hadn’t gone a day without a glass of something in his hand for too long. Pete helped him quit, sort of, or tried to. He’s never been good at detoxing. The only way he hasn’t gotten high on benzos lately is by phoning Ashlee and asking for an update on their son when the urge strikes. Sometimes she doesn’t answer and he has to get the polaroid of Bronx out of his wallet while trying to remember what he feels like in his arms.

Pete closes the door and goes to sit on the bed, watching Patrick stay standing there, looking lost, in the middle of the room.

“I just… I wanted to make sure you were okay,” Patrick says finally, shifting nervously.

Pete laughs, trying not to sound bitter. It probably doesn’t work, feels like something is crawling out of his throat. “I’m okay.”

“You don’t look okay,” Patrick mutters. Pete just glares at him, so Patrick sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “Look, dude, I didn’t come here to—”

“Are _you_ okay?” Pete asks, standing up.

Patrick’s looking Pete in the face, with a frown like it’s burning him to do so. Pete hasn’t been able to properly determine Patrick’s thoughts by his expression since the first time he was incapable of doing so after giving Patrick his heart on a platter sixteen months ago. Patrick looks back down at the floor and swallows. “I don’t know, Pete,” he says quietly. “We just played our last show together for—” his voice cracks, “I don’t know. For a while. So, no. I guess not.”

That violent something Pete swallowed down during the show is back, threatening to consume him. Fall Out Boy has crashed and Pete feels stranded, looking around hopelessly at the debris left behind. He tries to swallow it down again, but his eyes are already stinging. He shakes his head, closes his eyes. Maybe he’s not as good at this as he thought.

“Patrick,” he says, and it seems like that’s all Patrick needs, because he’s closed the long distance between them in a few long strides. He’s pulling Pete’s collar and for a wild moment Pete thinks he’s about to be kissed. He isn’t; Patrick is bringing Pete’s head against his shoulder, wrapping his arms tight around him and clinging like a man drowning.

Pete barely registers moving at all, but he’s soon clinging back just as hard. He’s shaking, he realises. Or perhaps Patrick is. Perhaps they both are. Something loud and ugly rips itself out of Pete’s throat without his permission and he’s sobbing, burrowing his face into Patrick’s shoulder while struggling to find some semblance of control. He can’t stop the aching pain of it all from coming out, marking tear stains over Patrick’s shirt. It’s all fallen apart and there’s not a damn thing Pete can do about it. His band, his best friends, _Patrick_ …

It takes him a few moments to realise he’s not alone in his tears. Patrick is clinging to the back of Pete’s shirt, and tears or snot or saliva or all the above are wetting a crevice in Pete’s neck.

He hasn’t been close to Patrick like this in sixteen months. They’ve barely touched outside photoshoots, never mind whatever this is. Pete can’t believe how much he’s missed the smell of Patrick’s skin, even now, sweaty and salty and shaking. It hits him so hard, reminds him of so much, he might actually drown in it.

“Oh, fuck,” Patrick murmurs, and he pulls back from Pete, wiping his face with his sleeve. Their eyes meet; tears still cling to Patrick’s eyelashes like raindrops. He’s looking at Pete with something that could only be described as desperation, desperation Pete hasn’t seen on him in such an achingly long time. “Fuck,” he says again, and kisses Pete.

Patrick tastes like tears and faint whiskey and so beautifully, undeniably _Patrick_ , Pete feels transported in time. It’s not 2009 and he’s not in a hotel room in New York; it’s 2005 and they’re alone together in Pete’s bunk, kissing gently and basking in the newness of it while the sleeping breaths of their bandmates fill the quiet; it’s 2006 and they’re making out hungrily on the couch of Pete’s new LA home; it’s 2007 and they’re in the band’s darkened dressing room, Pete on his knees and Patrick’s back against the door so no one can catch them. It’s 2008 and they’re in Patrick’s house, pulling each other toward the guest bedroom, mouths moving desperately against each other—

“Patrick,” Pete pulls their lips apart, the name ripping itself out of him without his permission as he does so. _Stop._ Dully, there’s some part of his brain telling him  _stop_ , presumably the part furthest away from his steadily hardening cock. It’s like a throbbing pulse in the back of his head. Get out before it’s too late. _This will hurt later._

He won’t stop though, because overpowering that is the need, the wanting frantic need to have Patrick close. It’s been too long. How can it have been so long, and he’s still so in love? How is that _fair?_

“Pete,” Patrick mutters gently, pressing his lips against Pete’s jaw. “I’m sorry— please, just. _Please_.”    

Pete’s cock, already twitching from the contact denied so long, reacts strongly to Patrick’s pleas.

They fall back onto the bed, Pete on top of Patrick, pressing them to each other as he undoes the button of his jeans and kisses the curve of Patrick’s jaw.

“How,” Pete breaths against Patrick’s clean shaved skin, “How much have you been drinking?” Patrick’s not been slurring or stumbling, but the scent of whiskey is stronger now their bodies are pressed together.

Patrick shakes his head, hand stroking over Pete’s shaved hair. “Not much, promise. I was—was going to, but – I spilt it,” he glances down to the collar of his shirt, the top of his chest, which Pete does notice is a little damp, and not just from Pete’s tears, “and I just… couldn’t, I don’t know. Maybe this… would be easier if I had? Easier for us if we both had?”

“Harder,” Pete mutters against Patrick’s jaw immediately, thinking of drunk hand jobs after open bar parties. “I want every part of you.”

“Pete.” Patrick mutters it like a prayer, and his lips are on Pete’s in an instant.

Pete kisses back hungrily, pressing Patrick into the mattress and half convinced he’ll float away without Pete’s weight on top of him. He doesn’t want anything between them anymore. He wants to strip them both down until they’re just bones. Wants to melt into Patrick until they’re one person.

They work off their clothes together, not talking for several minutes, not needing to in between eyes locked and pushed touches. Patrick’s body is thinner than Pete remembers, he’s been watching his weight a lot lately, but he’s still the same in every way that matters.

“Tell me what you want,” Patrick whispers when they’re both naked. “I wanna—” He swallows, hand palming over Pete’s cheek with something like awe in his eyes, eyes that have turned back into the window to Patrick’s mind without Pete noticing. “I want to be there for you. Just— Tell me what you want.”

“I wanna blow you,” Pete says immediately, suddenly needing his lips wrapped around Patrick’s thick cock more than he’s ever needed anything. “I want—I need to taste your fucking cock, Patrick. I need to taste your _fucking cum_.”

Patrick’s eyes widen, just a little, in a way that reminds Pete of some of their first times doing this, over four years ago now. Maybe it’s all a little new again. “That you can definitely do,” he says around a smile.

Pete doesn’t need telling twice. He’s fumbling a hand over the base of Patrick’s cock, kissing lips over the hardening pink length and revelling in Patrick’s soft gasp. He takes him in slowly, licking the tip and parting his mouth gently, bit by bit, letting the taste of hard skin melt over his tongue. God, it’s been way too long since he tasted this. He remembers hating the taste of cock the first time he tried it – now it seems a deep ache that he could have gone so long without his lips wrapped around Patrick like this. One of the reasons he’ll admit he’s going so slow is because of how long it’s been since he practised the art of sucking cock. 

Pete feels nails dig into his head a little and can tell Patrick is annoyed by Pete’s lack of hair now, grasping for a clutch and finding none. In this moment Pete’s regretting it a little himself, and would apologise, maybe, but his mouth is getting full. Patrick is making soft gasps and hitched murmurs, a melody for Pete alone tonight. Pete thinks those rhythmic noises Patrick makes now might almost be better than those he makes while singing.

He sucks gently at first, tongue licking along his length, feeling the taste of precum slip down his throat. Then quicker, hand curving around his balls. He sucks, feeling the length move in his mouth as Patrick struggles not to buck his hips, soulful moans increasing in volume. 

The melody develops words. “Pete—” he gasps, and Pete feels the word jolt through him. He’s missed this. _He’s missed this_ so much. Pete’s eyes look up while his lips move, mouth growing wetter with saliva around the taste. Patrick looks heavenly, eyes lidded as they look down at him, face slick with sweat, mouth parted as he breathes desperation, right at the edge of infinity.

Pete watches as Patrick comes, watches as he jolts, then jerks back, cries out, “ _Pete_ ,” loud enough to send Pete’s mind spinning. Pete tastes Patrick, feels his mouth filling up, before he pulls back and swallows.

His vision is almost swimming against the rock hard throb of his own dick against Patrick’s legs. Patrick’s breaths are coming quick and steady as he comes off of the afterglow, arching back before leaning forward and smiling coyly at Pete’s obvious desperation.    

“Your turn,” he whispers around a smirk, and pulls Pete’s lips to meet his briefly, his hand teasing against his balls. Then he flips Pete over, lowering his head to Pete’s groin and letting his tongue taste the bottom of Pete’s cock.

Pete groans as Patrick looks up at him with dark eyes and takes one of Pete’s balls in his mouth, sucking while Pete feels the aching spark of it splinter his mind. God, since when did Patrick take his time like this? He groans, “Patrick— fuck, you gotta…”

“Mm,” was all Patrick mumbles in answer, his lips moving to the head of Pete’s hard cock, beautiful full lips wetting around it and tongue sliding along its length. Before Pete can groan and curse about the aching teasing Patrick is putting him through, he feels wet full lips take his cock in fully, Patrick’s hands and fingers playing along his balls like they move along the strings of his guitar.   

Pete feels himself buck with pleasure, and he forgets. He forgets where he is and why they’re here. He forgets what they’ll be doing, or not doing, in the following months. He forgets why they shouldn’t be doing this. He forgets. All he knows, all he is, is the feeling of plush lips against his cock, of riptide eyes looking up at him above his flat stomach.

He comes undone before he can warn Patrick, the surprise of it hitching his breath and widening the eyes that stare at Patrick’s. Patrick rears back, but swallows most of Pete’s cum, matching Pete’s breaths as he crawls up to collapse against Pete’s chest, clinging onto him.

Pete would feel bad, maybe, about them both coming before they’ve actually fucked, but they have all night. All night. They won’t sleep, he decides. They can’t sleep tonight, not when they have this. They have this, tonight. Give him less than a minute, he can already feel it, he'll be ready for Patrick again.

Pete looks over at the window, brushing fingers idly over Patrick’s shoulder blades, letting himself breathe with Patrick’s breaths, letting his heart beat alongside Patrick’s heart, letting himself get lost in the home he’s been kept from for so long. He can see, vaguely, the lights of New York catching against the black violet sky.

“You knew I was the same, didn’t you?” Patrick whispers, still clinging onto Pete like his life depends on it.

Pete frowns, confused. “What?”

“That I love, ah, I— I—” Patrick swallows, breathes against Pete’s neck. “I loved you, too,” he says softly, and there it is – the third break in Pete’s already permanently cracked heart.

Because that’s the thing. Pete told Patrick, or thought he did, in every breath. Every look, every on-stage half joked declaration and every lean into his neck and every sucked cock and secret whispered kiss. But it seemed to Pete, after what happened in Patrick’s house last year, that maybe Patrick refused to hear all of that. And maybe Patrick told Pete things he refused to hear, too. He thought he knew everything there was to know about Patrick Stump, thought he could trace Patrick’s patterns in his dreams, but… he didn’t know everything. He doesn’t.

“Oh,” Pete says in a voice that doesn’t sound like his own.

“You didn’t,” Patrick says, sounding pained. “You _didn’t know_.”

Pete shakes his head, unsure if Patrick can even see him. Nothing and everything has changed overnight.

Patrick loved Pete. Those times, all of them, and Patrick wasn’t just having fun or longing for some sort of closeness, there was love there. That’s everything. That changes _everything_.

Except where it doesn’t.

Except where Pete still has a wife and a son who he loves. Patrick has a girlfriend and Pete’s heart cracks every time he sees him look at her. Their band has fallen apart around them, still now disintegrating in front of him. Everything they said in Patrick’s spare room all those months ago is still true. Isn’t it?

Pete desperately wants to mash it all together, all the lives they’re leading, the feelings they harbour; he wants to force it together until it fits. But it can’t work like that. These jigsaw pieces won’t go together that way.

Pete can’t have Patrick like that. He knows he can’t.

Patrick said _loved_.

And now it won’t stop _aching_.

“We should do it again,” he whispers instead of accepting any of this. “We can— I can come to your place this week. We could—” 

“Pete.”

His voices rises a little. “No, listen, we have, like— free time now, at least for a little while, and I just— this was good, I—”

“And Ashlee?” interrupts Patrick, breath hot against Pete’s shoulder.

Pete closes his eyes, and it feels like the name alone is filling his stomach with hot acidic guilt. “She— There’s this Broadway show she’s doing next month, she’ll be busy rehearsing for that.”

“Bronx?”

Pete swallows, something catching his throat. “I mean, I— Yeah, I definitely wanna go home and see him first, but—”

“For what? A couple days, until your nanny takes care of him?” asks Patrick, voice raising, growing with vitriol. “Or are you going to bring him to my place? Let him nap in the next room while we fuck? What would _Ashlee_ think of that?”

“Jesus, Patrick!” Pete claws his way out of Patrick’s grip enough to lean away and glare at him. “The fuck?”

Patrick just glares back, eyes hard. 

Something in Pete’s eyes must betray how hurt he feels because Patrick’s expression softens after a few seconds. “I’m sorry, I— Pete… we can’t.” He swallows, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “I won’t be a _footnote_.”

“You said we’d stop last time,” Pete points out, eyes dropping to Patrick’s chest. “And you’re not a— You’re _not_ —”

“It stops,” Patrick interrupts, voice thick with grief. “This was like a— a goodbye or something. I can’t… can’t do it again, I…”

“A goodbye,” Pete echoes.

There is a moment of dawning clarity while those words sink in; slowly, realisation settling his insides and turning them to stone. He recalls Patrick’s nerves as he walked into the hotel room, his arms enveloping Pete’s, his lips crushing against Pete’s. The memories settle against others from an afternoon sixteen months ago when Patrick couldn’t look at Pete; when he asked Pete to mark his skin so a bruise could sit there for him like a reminder; when he touched Pete with the knowledge it would be the last time _(so much for that)_.

He came here tonight to ask _how Pete is doing_. What a crock of shit.

Pete pulls away from Patrick, the touch too hot, too cold, too much, and pads his feet over the edge of the bed, staring at his boxers lying on the floor with an aching sense of déjà vu.

He can’t give the fragmented pieces of his heart away again. Not again.

“Get out,” he says, voice steadier than he feels. Patrick doesn’t move. His voice rises. “You got it, didn’t you? What you came for? _Get out_.”

“No.” He glances over in time to see Patrick shake his head. “I didn’t— Pete, it wasn’t like that—”

“Get the _fuck_ out of here!” he yells, and he grabs Patrick’s wrist for emphasis, urging him out of the bed that will now smell of sweat, sex and Patrick, disintegrating even the smallest chance that Pete will get a single second of sleep tonight.

Patrick pulls his hand free, stumbling over the other side of the bed as though drunk, almost crashing to the floor. Pete looks away, back down at the boxers strewn across the carpet, and hears the rumple of fabric against skin that tells him Patrick is dressing quickly.

Pete looks up to see him stop at the doorway, fully dressed but for an unbuttoned shirt, leaning against the door for a few seconds as though afraid he’ll fall. His hand is held across his face, covering his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says.

Pete wants to tear it off him, he wants to tear him apart. Anger is keeping him grounded, keeping him sane, keeping his heart from falling out of his mouth again.

_I’m still in love with you._

_“Fuck_ _off!_ ”

As he leaves, Pete sees Patrick’s eyes squeeze shut against tears. He sees Patrick’s hands shake as he pulls the door shut on his way out.

He won’t read into it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments and kudos would be awesome, as always. feel free to catch me @1833outboy on tumblr and [reblog](http://1833outboy.tumblr.com/post/178420780121/spiral-of-shame-1833outboy-archive-of-our-own) the fic there if you'd like!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pete's life crumbles.

There’s a lot of things Pete didn’t expect from not having his band anymore, but by far one of the worst things is the emptiness of it.

He goes from busy days pre-planned around interviews and concerts and press parties and studio recordings to absolutely nothing. His emails narrow to a crawl, then to almost nothing, his calendar wipes empty, and his life feels swept clean of almost everything that mattered.

Even Ashlee isn’t there, not because she doesn’t want to be, exactly, but because she has a life outside of Pete where Pete barely has a life outside of her and Bronx anymore. Pete wasn’t lying to Patrick before; Ashlee has a Broadway show and it takes up a huge chunk of her time. He goes to her show sometimes and visits her hotel room in New York for days at a time, but he’s back in L.A. for longer periods.  

It leaves him alone with their infant son a lot, which is good because parenting is perhaps the only solid thing in his life that Pete finds he’s enjoying. Bronx makes him want to be better, even while the aching mess of everything else in his head seems to make it impossible.

The weeks crawl to months and more months, and Pete crawls with them. He tries to keep himself busy with a new musical project of his own, he spends every other moment with his kid. He talks to his friends outside of Fall Out Boy a lot too, especially Gabe, about the band, about Ash, about his son, about what he has planned for the Black Cards.

He doesn’t talk about Patrick, avoids the kid’s name at all costs. Even while mumbling miserably into Gabe’s chest about Fall Out Boy’s destruction Patrick becomes “the guys”, and it’s like snakes in Pete’s chest whenever anybody mentions his name in passing.

He doesn’t think about Patrick either, except when he does.

Patrick’s insistence that this would only be a “break” was some sort of delusion, of that much Pete is sure. They’ll never play together again. They’ll never write together again. Fall Out Boy is over, it’s gone. And as far as Pete is now concerned, Patrick’s gone with it.

**

By the time 2010 has shifted into 2011 Pete is seeing Ashlee less and less, and they’re fighting more and more when he does see her. He needs to “stop with the benzos”, according to her. He needs to “get his shit together”. He certainly doesn’t disagree, but it hurts more when she says it.

It’s sixteen months after the “break” began when she tells him she wants a divorce.

He gets a text from Patrick the same day the press gets wind of it: _I’m coming over later,_ is all the message says _._

Like Pete can’t count on one hand the number of times they’ve seen each other over the past year. Like the only times they’ve actually been in the same building weren’t just during mutual meet ups. Like those meetings weren’t frayed with awkwardness and thick with tension.

Like Patrick knows Pete needs to see him today.

Despite the text, Pete honestly does not expect Patrick to show up. The very idea is… stupid, laughable, a joke. Not that he thinks Patrick would make a joke like that recently after Pete received some of the worst news of his life, exactly. More that it’s probably a misunderstanding, a wrong number, or perhaps Patrick deciding something in the moment that he then regrets and won’t go through with. Or— hell, Pete’s half convinced the text is a Xanax shaped hallucination, except for the fact that he’s been saving those for tonight when he knows he’ll really need them.

Pete doesn’t text back, in any case, and later that afternoon he’s on the phone to Gabe when he hears the buzz from his intercom telling him someone’s at his gate wanting to be let in.

“Did you order me pizza again?” he asks Gabe, frowning.

“Not me – you got free pizza at your door? Don’t fucking complain.” Gabe laughs.

“No, or maybe, I don’t know yet. Hold on.” He keeps the phone to his ear and goes to inspect the intercom, expecting kids, the press, or maybe (wishful thinking) Ashlee coming to drop off Bronx two days early.

The comm screen shows him a Patrick Stump he barely recognises anymore. Patrick offers a soft smile when he sees Pete has picked up. “Hi, Pete,” he says, quiet.

Pete should probably say something to that. “Hello,” would do. He speaks to Gabe instead, “Dude, I’ve gotta call you back.” Then he buzzes Patrick in and hangs up the phone and the intercom. Less than a minute later there’s a knock on the door.

Patrick doesn’t step inside after Pete’s opened the door for him. He stands and he waits and he fidgets, holding a paper bag in one hand. It bothers Pete that he won’t just come straight inside for some reason, memories twisting his brain. It shouldn’t matter, should be good; Pete’s not sure he should let him in.

Patrick looks odd with thicker styled hair and no hat or sideburns; with the kind of shirt Pete remembers him putting aside because it was too tight and too fancy for regular wear three years ago; with the roundness all but gone from his cheeks.

“I could’ve had plans,” Pete says, unmoving. He had not had plans today, though that’s only because his two-year-old is with Ashlee right now, and who else would he want to have actual plans with? Well, okay, maybe the answer to that question is staring at him, frowning like he knows him and looking like half a stranger. But Pete’s been trying to change that. Trying for over a year now.

“I know,” Patrick admits. “But… well, I thought you’d be— I mean, I figured you didn’t.”

It’s bold of Patrick, Pete thinks, to think he still knows Pete, to think he still figures what Pete does and doesn’t do anymore in the face of crisis. He doesn’t know it’s only luck, really, that Pete is here and not at the park with his son. But Patrick wouldn’t know Pete takes frequent trips out whenever (and only, really) he has his kid. Patrick hasn’t seen Bronx since he was ten months old, after all.

As they stand there, Patrick’s face falls into an expression way too close to pity for Pete’s liking. “I’m sorry, Pete. I— fuck, I’m just sorry.”

“Yeah.” Pete frowns, but moves aside and gestures toward the living room. “Come in, I guess.”

“I, uh. I brought burritos,” Patrick says, holding up the bag as he walks into the foyer. It’s Del Taco, Pete realises, and he has a sudden flash memory of eating burritos in the studio with Patrick a million years ago. It hurts more than he cares to admit.

He leads Patrick to the living room and sits on the sofa, watching as Patrick does the same in the chair opposite. Pete tries not to think about how easy it used to be for them to sit so close they were almost on top of each other, no matter how many seating options there were elsewhere. And that was in company; they were even worse (better) while alone. “Why are you here?” he asks.

“I… I brought burritos,” Patrick repeats, like that’s explanation enough.

“Great. Thanks, but I already ate,” he says, biting. He didn’t already eat. He’s fucking starving actually, hasn’t eaten all day.

Patrick’s frowning as if he already knows Pete is bullshitting him. He probably does know; Pete’s eating habits haven’t changed in the past year and a half. “Then maybe you can save what you don’t eat for later then,” he says, getting to his feet. “I’ll get us some plates.”

Ten minutes later they’re sitting on opposite ends of the sofa, chewing on cooling burritos in silence. Patrick has something vegetarian now, like he used to get when he was a teenager, not the grilled chicken thing he got a few years back. He remembered the exact kind Pete likes though, even the extra sauce. For some reason this makes Pete’s chest flutter with something he won’t identify. 

“Is Bronx around?” Patrick asks, glancing at the doorway as though expecting a two-year old to suddenly tumble in and ask for some of their food. There are toys strewn around the living room; Pete hasn’t been able to find the energy to tidy them away.

“With his mom,” he replies. Saying Ashlee’s name out loud has gotten kind of hard. He doesn’t miss her like he thought he might, but the reminder that he’s alone is a recurring sucker punch.

“Have you… like, sorted out a custody agreement yet, or—?”

“No,” says Pete quickly, sharply, wishing to talk about anything else.

There’s more silence, it stretches as they eat, thick with unsaid things and unwanted memories, and Pete’s not sure that’s any better than talking about his divorce.

“Who were you on the phone to?” Patrick finally asks, less comfortable with silence than Pete is— and Pete’s pretty fucking uncomfortable right now.

“Gabe,” Pete replies, swallowing the last of his burrito. God, he really was hungry.

“Oh, how’s he doing?”

“Okay. He’s been a good… a good friend to me lately… especially since— you know.” The implication of _you haven’t been a good friend_ is there, even while Pete’s not sure he means it entirely. It may be true, but it’s not like friendship is a one-way street. And what did he expect, really?

Patrick’s frowning like Pete means something else though, is still frowning as he finishes the last of his food. “Well, good you have someone to… talk to,” he finally says quietly, something hidden behind the words. “About the divorce.” He sounds sort of annoyed for some reason, but maybe that’s just how Patrick sounds now. How the fuck would Pete know? He’s barely seen the guy for well over a year.

Pete picks up his plate and goes into the kitchen, feeling the conversation edging back to places he’s just not willing to deal with from Patrick. It’s probably unfair. Patrick’s probably trying to help, Pete knows that. If it were almost anyone else here right now – Gabe, Brenden, Joe, Andy, Travie, his fucking mom – then he’d either be raging about it or crying about it. It was one or the other, constantly. It’s all too different with Patrick though, for way too many reasons.

He goes over to the sink, deciding that he’ll start on the dishes he’s been ignoring, for lack of anything else to do and not ready to go back to Patrick. He hears a small voice behind him before he even gets chance to run the water though. “You should’ve told me, you know.”

Pete breathes slowly, twice, then turns around. “You got something to say, Patrick?”

Patrick moves forward, and his voice is no longer small. It’s hurt and angry. “I just – I was standing right next to you while you married her, Pete. I gave a speech. I was the first person you told when you proposed. And— And some asshole in fucking OK! Magazine knew that you’re getting divorced before I did,” Patrick says through a scowl. “I only found out today because I went to buy a bottle of water while I was out jogging this morning. Don’t you think I deserved to know?”

His tone is biting, though Pete still has a moment of wanting to ignore the resentment and focus instead on the fact that Patrick apparently goes _jogging_ in the _morning_ like an adult with his life put together right. He probably wears proper sweats for it now and everything.

He puts that aside for later and quips back, “Are you seriously mad I didn’t tell you?”

“Yes, I’m mad! What the fuck, Pete?”

“What the fuck?” Pete repeats. “What the fuck do you think? We’ve barely spoken to each other in over a year.”

“I was your best friend for for _eight_ years!”

“Yeah,” Pete says loudly, harshly, his chest stinging with the truth of it. “ _Was_.”

They both fall silent at that. Patrick looks a little bit like he wants to hit Pete. Pete’s not sure he doesn’t want him to. He could hit back. That’d be familiar. That’d sure be like some sort of old times they shared.

What Patrick does instead is far more concerning. He steps forward and wraps his arms around Pete, pulling him into a tight hug. Pete stiffens, still with shock, quite sure he must have started hallucinating. “I’m sorry,” he hears Patrick whisper against his ear, and that’s all it takes for Pete to fall, to lean into it, to give in like he has so many times before. He lets his arms wrap back around Patrick, chin resting on his shoulder. Patrick’s skinnier frame would almost make the whole thing a bit unrecognisable, if it weren’t for the fact that he smells just the same. It’s the familiar lingering scent of sweat, Axe, guitar melodies and tour bus movie marathons, of _Patrick._ It shouldn’t be some sort of relief, but god, it is. Pete realises then: this is it, this is what he was waiting for, this is what he wanted today, yesterday, everyday since that night in New York, this is what he needed.

“I’m sorry,” Patrick says again, pulling away slowly. His eyes are on Pete’s, he’s not pulled very far back.

Pete ducks his head, glancing at his shoes with a shrug. “Don’t be.” He takes a step back, because for some reason standing that close for a second longer is actually terrifying.

Patrick clears his throat, shoving his hands into the pockets of his slacks and shaking his head. “No, I— I shouldn’t… You’re hurting, and I wanted to help, but here I am just being a fucking asshole.”

“I wanted to tell you, you know,” Pete admits quietly. “Wasn’t really sure how.”

Patrick meets his eyes as a smile breaks his face. “Phones giving you trouble in your old age?”

Pete snorts. “The guy who didn’t even start using the internet until about two years ago is not allowed to make jokes about anyone else’s failure with technology.”

“Hey, fuck you,” Patrick says, but he’s kidding, smiling a smile that’s burrowed its way into Pete’s skin too many times. “I use Twitter and everything now.”

“I’ve seen,” Pete admits. He won’t admit he’s checked Patrick’s Twitter daily since he first started posting, against his own better judgement. That’d be weird.

“Nice that it’s so easy to talk to fans now,” says Patrick. He frowns. “It is most of the time anyway.”

“Pretty sure I told you that for years.”

“You did.” There’s a pause. “I missed this,” Patrick says through a fond smile that fills Pete with nostalgia. “I… I miss _you_. I know things between us were kind of…” He trails off. Perhaps, like Pete, he’s unsure of the right way to finish that sentence. They’ve kind of been a lot of things. “I just – I want us to still be friends, Pete.” 

“Just friends,” Pete says after a moment.

Patrick nods slowly. “I thought we were pretty good at that. The friends part. Maybe.”

Pete smiles. “That’d be nice,” he murmurs softly. Because fuck, it would. Pete misses him. Misses all kinds of him. And if he can’t have the part of Patrick that aches his cock in the dark of the early morning or the part that longs to touch, he can at least have the part of Patrick that makes him eat when he’s forgotten to and laugh at dumb jokes and teases him about stupid shit.

He’ll be Patrick’s friend. He can do that.

**

So, they’re friends again. Sort of. Patrick’s very busy, on tour with Panic! and his own shows and promoting and releasing new records, and likewise Pete eventually finds himself back with more on his calendar than he has had for months, throwing himself into music with the Black Cards and other projects to stop him thinking about the divorce and… and other things. All of this leaves very little time for either of them to hang out. That, added with the fact that Patrick has never been much of texter – or one for using a phone much in general – means that Pete and Patrick still don’t really… talk that much.

But they will find an evening to catch up a little where they can. Ten to twenty minutes every month or so to get snippets of the basics going on in each other’s lives.

This is how Pete learns several months after his divorce that Patrick has split up with his girlfriend.

“It happened today, actually,” Patrick says quietly while Pete lies back on his couch, phone held tight to his ear. “I almost… I mean, I figured it’d be pretty fucking hypocritical not to tell you, you know. After what I said before.”

“I’m sorry,” Pete says, though he’s not sure that’s entirely true. He’s sorry Patrick sounds so upset, at least. He’s just not sure it’s for the right reasons. Fuck.

“Me too,” says Patrick. “It was totally my fault. I mean, we were good. We were great. But I told her…” There’s quiet that drags too long to be a pause. Patrick sniffs. 

“Told her what?”

Pete hears him clear his throat. When he speaks, his voice is thick, “Nothing. Doesn’t matter, it’s over. I’m… Whatever. Single. Free.”

“Right,” says Pete quietly, suddenly aware that this is the first time the two of them have been officially single at the same time in years. _(Stop it.)_ “Are you okay though?”

“Fine, I’m fine,” Patrick says, and his voice is still thick with something hidden. “Listen, I’ve gotta go. I’ve got this— this radio interview thing tomorrow, and it’s pretty early. Gotta try and sleep, so. I’ll… see you.”

“Right. Okay. I’ll, uh, talk to you another time then.” It’s not even eleven o’clock yet. Pete knows Patrick never goes to bed before midnight, whether he has an early start the following day or not.

Then again, maybe that’s changed. Maybe he doesn’t know anymore.

After all, these talks aren’t enough to really _know_ that much about each other now. Not really.

**

That changes in 2012, a year after Pete’s divorce. They may have talked on the phone and emailed several times, but Pete hasn’t spoken to Patrick in person since Joe’s wedding several months back. But then one morning he’s browsing Twitter, and he sees Patrick has linked to a new post on his blog.

It’s a pretty depressing read. Pete wonders to himself, a sort of sick twist to his stomach: if they’re friends now, if things are like they were before their break, before they met often between hotel sheets— if they’re _friends_ now, then why didn’t Pete know this stuff was going through Patrick’s head?

He’s on the phone to him almost immediately. Patrick wrote stuff about never wanting to play music again, about feeling like a has-been and wanting to disappear. Yeah, that shit scares Pete. So sue him.

He also wrote that he’d be super psyched to do Fall Out Boy again. Pete’s trying very hard not to read too hard into that part.

When he finally answers on the eighth ring, Patrick sounds both apologetic and tired. “Sorry, it was… it was stupid. I might delete it.”

“It’s not stupid. It sounded pretty heartfelt.”

“Maybe.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I—” Patrick stops, sighs. “It all… probably sounded a lot sadder than I meant it to. I’m not, like, seriously depressed or anything.” It’s true – a relief – that Patrick doesn’t sound like the broken man Pete had feared, exactly, but he still sounds… defeated.

“You said you felt like you didn’t wanna play or record music ever again.”

“I also said it was probably the emotional pessimism talking,” Patrick mutters. Pete pictures him on the sofa in his house, feet pulled up under him, GarageBand open on his laptop, Bowie playing on the stereo. Pete aches. Misses him with a ferocity he’d forgotten he had.

“I wanna see you,” he says around the desperation of it. “I’m gonna come over, okay?”

“Pete… I’m okay, really. You don’t need to, like, check up on me.”

“I know I don’t, dude. That’s not what this is – I just want to see you. That so hard to believe?”

There’s a pause like maybe Patrick really does find that hard to believe. Maybe Patrick was lying last year, or at least misguided; they’re not that good at the friends thing at all. Not anymore, at least.

“I’ll be there this afternoon – you’re not doing anything, right?”

There’s something that’s not quite laughter in Patrick’s voice. “Well, I did have a hot date with my DVR, but I guess I can cancel.” He sounds a little bitter. Pete wonders if Patrick’s been entirely honest about how upset with everything he is right now.

“I’ll see you soon.”

Several hours later Pete’s walking up Patrick’s driveway and trying to calm his fraying nerves. It feels incredibly odd to be standing on this doorstep, and Pete realises abruptly that he hasn’t been near this house in four years. His hand goes for the door handle automatically; apparently muscle memory isn’t something four years can stop. He stares at it for a moment, then determinedly removes the hand and raps twice on the painted wood instead.

It takes long enough for Patrick to answer that Pete wonders if maybe he’s not home, if maybe something came up. Or maybe he decided to ignore Pete. Just crawled into bed with his reruns of Downton Abbey anyway.

Pete’s just about to text him when the door opens. “Oh,” Patrick says. He’s wearing Batman pyjama pants and an old Saves the Day t-shirt from forever ago. He’s obviously just come out of the shower. His hair is mussed, damp. For some reason there’s a crack in the left lens of his glasses. He looks strangely small and Pete’s met with overwhelming urge to crawl around him and keep away anything that might make him look like that ever again. “You came,” Patrick says, surprised. He has a small glass of something amber in his hand.

Pete frowns. “I said I would.”

Patrick steps aside, letting Pete inside. It looks the same. There are a few less pictures on the wall and the vinyl collection by the stereo looks a little smaller, but other than that everything about the living room looks exactly the same. Nostalgia burns Pete’s insides. 

“You want a drink?” Patrick’s stood in the doorway, raising his glass.

“Is that wise?” Pete asks quietly.

“You really gonna do the overprotective dad thing right now?” Patrick asks through half a laugh. He rolls his eyes. “No, Pete, I guess it’s probably not wise. I don’t care.”

“I didn’t think you’d be drinking, is all,” he mutters, frowning. “And don’t call me your dad, that’s fucking weird.”

“You want one or not?”

“Yeah, sure.” Because fuck it. Fuck it, he could do with a drink about now too.

Patrick disappears into the kitchen as Pete sits on Patrick’s fake leather sofa and tries not to think. The entire room is full of shadows, ghosts of a Pete and Patrick too young and too stupid to know what was coming. Patrick straddled Pete in the armchair opposite him, Pete remembers the roughness of Patrick’s sideburns against his cheek as he whispered sinful secrets at the lobe of his ear.

“Pete?” Pete blinks and sees Patrick sitting right next to him, frowning and offering a glass of what Pete now realises is scotch. “You… good?”

“Sorry… yeah,” Pete mutters, taking the drink and knocking back a huge gulp immediately.

Patrick raises an eyebrow. “Thought I was the one looking for answers at the bottom of a glass here.”

Pete smiles and it’s a little painful. “It’s weird,” he admits. “Being here. It’s been a while, you know?”

Patrick nods. “I remember.” There’s a set to his jaw like he gets it, like he’s thinking of the same ghosts Pete is.

“So,” Pete says after a silence where Patrick stares into his glass, frowning. “Things have been pretty shitty lately?”

Patrick shrugs.

“What happened to your glasses?” Pete asks when Patrick refuses to say anything.

“Oh.” Patrick winces, removing the glasses and looking over the small crack in the lens. “Um. I maybe overreacted to some asshole tearing me apart online. My glasses were unfortunately the closest thing available to throw.” He drops the glasses to his lap and runs a hand through his hair. “God, I sound fucking ridiculous.”

“Kinda,” says Pete, smiling softly. “But I get it. You never did handle criticism well.” Patrick glances over with a frown, but he doesn’t disagree. “C’mon, I bet there were more people who liked Soul Punk than those that hated it, right? I know _I_ loved the album.” Understatement. Pete spent months listening to nothing but Soul Punk and Truant Wave, trying desperately not to read into any of Patrick’s (too literal, modest) lyrics and focusing instead on the voice he’d been kept from for so long.

“Maybe…” Patrick shakes his head. “It wasn’t even about hating or loving the album though. That’s the thing. It was always just about…”

“Fall Out Boy?” Pete murmurs.

“Yeah.” Patrick frowns. “They were dicks, and I fucking hate some of things they…” He sighs, trailing off. “But they miss it, I guess. I get that.” Pete waits and wishes, with more hope than he has the right to have, for the _I miss it too_. It comes, not in words, but in the quirk of his lips and softness in his eyes as he glances at Pete.

Pete swallows, watching the way Patrick’s eyes move, unfocused, to the carpet, watching the set to his shoulders, the shadows under his eyes. He knocks back his drink and places the glass on the coffee table before saying what he’s been thinking about since he first got on the plane to Chicago. “Patrick, I wanna write with you again.”

Patrick seems to stiffen a little as those words sink in. “What?”

“I… I have lyrics,” Pete admits. “A lot of them. You know, stuff I’ve written but can’t do anything with.”

Patrick’s eyes meet Pete’s; he seems unsure, but not dismissive or uncomfortable like Pete had feared on the journey to Chicago. “The Black Cards… Don’t you want them for that?”

Pete shakes his head. “They won’t… go there. You’re the only one who really knows how to work them. I tried… I even let Bebe and Spencer try, but… they can’t do it like you can. I like some of the stuff we made, but it… doesn’t ever really sound just like I want it to. Not really. You’re the only one…” He lets the words hang there between them for a moment. “The only one,” he repeats.

Patrick nods, frowning slightly. “Yeah,” he says after a few seconds of quiet, of Pete holding his breath. “I think I’d like that.”

Pete can’t help it; he cracks a smile, something warm settling in his chest. His words, his thoughts, his lyrics, for so long they’ve been missing that part, that puzzle piece only Patrick could ever truly give him.

Patrick meets his eyes, smiles back, and Pete is suddenly infinitely aware of just how close they are, their thighs touching. Something electric and familiar is keeping his eyes on Patrick’s eyes, until they dip, without permission, to the plush mouth that has sung Pete lullabies over a tinny receiver and sucked him dry in darkened dressing rooms. He swallows, and something small and significant shifts between them, he can see it in the gold specks of Patrick’s eyes.   

Patrick moves forward, and their lips don’t brush, but they’re close. Too close. There’s that voice again. The warning. This time, Pete knows he can’t ignore it. This time, he knows he can’t… he can’t go through the pain of losing Patrick for a third time. Losing everything all over again might kill him.

He pulls back. “Patrick,” he murmurs. “I can’t… I… It can’t be like it was… I can’t— I…”

Patrick stops the words with pressed fingers to Pete’s lips, the small contact already making his lips buzz with something sparkling. He has to resist the wild urge to take the fingers into his mouth and suck on them. Luckily, once sure Pete’s not running his mouth anymore, Patrick pulls them away before Pete can do anything too stupid.

Patrick bites his lip. “You asked me… a few months back, you asked me what I said when me and El broke up,” he says quietly. Pete nods, unwilling to admit that it’d had kept him up, wondering what Patrick meant by it. “I told her… I told her about us.”

Pete feels something bright and burning in his chest. He swallows. “About New York?” he asks softly, the memory of a hotel room full of tears and desperation coming to mind, of betrayal.

“All of it,” Patrick whispers. “New York, your marriage and your kid, the sneaking around and…” Patrick reaches out, touches Pete’s cheek gently and strokes his thumb over the stubble Pete missed when he shaved this morning. “I told her how I felt.” He swallows. “And how I still feel… about you. I told her I love you.”

“Oh,” says Pete, and because it seems like something he simply should be doing: Pete kisses him. It’s like everything he remembers it being, except the parts his cracked mind clearly forgot; he forgot the way Patrick dips his thumb under Pete’s chin sometimes, the exact warmth of his lips, the way they fit together so perfectly.

“Wha— Wait,” Patrick mutters between the kisses, sucking in a breath as Pete’s lips move to the soft stubble of his chin. “What— What about Gabe?”

Pete frowns, trying make sense of the words, trying to work out what the hell Gabe has to do with anything they’re doing right now. “No offence, but your dirty talk’s gotten pretty shit, Patrick,” he mutters against the curve of his jaw.

“No,” says Patrick, and the beautiful mess of lips on skin is gone as he pulls away. Pete is close to protesting, close to running away in fears flavoured with rejection, but Patrick starts talking before he can take the time to do anything more than stare, “You said you… you don’t want it like before. I don’t either. I can’t— I can’t be second, I can’t—”

“I’m not seeing anyone,” says Pete quickly. And he won’t even look at anyone else again, ever, if there’s a chance of having all of Patrick.

“What about Gabe?” Patrick asks again.

Pete doesn’t remember being this shit at following Patrick’s line of conversation. “What’s Gabe got to do with anything?”

“You and— and him,” says Patrick, frowning and looking a little frustrated, almost angry at Pete for not getting it. “You said – after the divorce that you and him…”

It clicks. “You think I’m sleeping with _Gabe?”_ Pete tries not to laugh, but it doesn’t really work, relief at finally understanding mixing with amused disbelief at what Patrick’s insinuating.

“You said,” says Patrick, still frowning, still annoyed. “After the divorce… you and him…”

“Pretty sure I just said he’s been a good friend,” Pete says calmly. “Nothing more, nothing less, dude.”

“Oh,” murmurs Patrick, face softening. His hand twines into Pete’s and he’s leaning forward, pressing their foreheads together. “There’s really no one else?” he asks, almost wary.

Pete thinks back to the partners he had while he fucked Patrick in dark corners – Ashlee, Jeanae, Mikey and the forgotten names and short-term nothings. His heart hurts with what they’ve lost, with what he made Patrick believe for years, with what he believed himself. With what they could’ve had. “I promise,” he says quietly.

Pete’s not sure when they got so bad at communicating – okay, that’s a lie, he knows exactly when. It’s frustrating, but at the same time… he knows they can fix this now.

Patrick brushes their lips together, full of hope, and Pete gives back like it’s all he knows to do. He feels himself be pushed back and lets it happen, lying on the sofa with Patrick’s knee between his thigh, against the hardening cock in the confines of his jeans. Patrick kisses hungrily, desperately, and Pete pushes a hand at the back of Patrick’s head, hand twining through his hair – no longer bleached but still a little lighter than it should be. 

He feels Patrick pull at his shirt, and they tug it off between them. Patrick strokes his fingers over the ink on his chest.

“Do you know,” he murmurs against Pete’s neck. “Do you know how many times I’ve come while thinking of you over the last few years?”

Pete feels his entire body fill with warmth, his cock hard as concrete and digging against his jeans. “Tell me,” he whispers.

“Too many – I swear it was every day, even when I didn’t want—” Patrick stops, wets his lips and puts a hand over the bulge at Pete’s groin. His hips buck a little despite himself. Patrick’s voice is quiet, husky, as he murmurs, “I’ve come in every room in this house thinking of you.”

Pete makes a low noise at the back of his throat. He needs him. He needs Patrick, needs the sweet feeling of bare skin on skin, of wrapping himself around the naked body he’s missed so much. He needs to be inside of him.

He fumbles desperately against Patrick’s shirt, and Patrick quickly pulls it off before moving to the zipper of Pete’s jeans. “Wh— Bedroom?” Pete suggests, pulling at Patrick’s pyjama pants. He wouldn’t mind doing everything and anything right here on Patrick’s couch, but he knows the lube and condoms don’t sit out here.

Patrick makes a low moan from the back of his throat, but nods, standing and pulling on the belt hoops of Pete’s jeans to drag him up. Automatically – again, some sort of fucking muscle memory he forgot he had – Pete heads for the guest bedroom, but before he can pull Patrick toward the door, he’s stopped by an arm around his waist. “No,” Patrick whispers, and gently guides them toward the bedroom opposite instead. Patrick’s room. 

As soon as they’re inside, Patrick is pushing Pete toward the bed, kissing him urgently before they fall together. Patrick’s lips move from his lips, down, down, to the coarse hairs just below his stomach, just above the waist band of his jeans. Patrick pulls at the pants until Pete’s cock is finally free. Patrick licks at the tip, eyes warm and twinkling and on Pete’s, and there’s no time to consider, to take stock, as he takes Pete in his mouth.

Pete hears a noise that must have come from his own throat, though he can focus on nothing but the feeling of wet, hot, beautiful, as Patrick sucks, continuing to keep his eyes on Pete’s. He looks more gorgeous than Pete remembers, somehow, and Pete almost chokes on the time they lost, they time they have left now.

“Patrick,” he gasps. Patrick pulls back, smiling around the spit and precum dripping from his lips. Then he moves back to Pete’s mouth, somehow managing to pull off his own pyjama pants and boxers at the same time. His cock is wonderfully hard against Pete’s thigh. Pete grinds himself against Patrick's legs at the loss of contact. 

“I wanna ride you,” Patrick whispers, and Pete grasps at the back of his head, pushes his fingers through his damp hair, and presses wet kisses against his mouth.

“I want that too,” he mutters. “Fuck, Patrick, I want that so much— You’ve no idea.” Patrick grins, and moves away. Pete is about to protest until he sees him going to the drawer by his bed. 

Pete takes the lube, giving his fingers a sizeable amount before pulling Patrick to his chest and reaching to the crease of his ass. Patrick gasps against Pete’s mouth as Pete pushes fingers into the tightness of Patrick’s hole. He feels Patrick jolt on top of him, a low moan, as he fucks himself against Pete’s hand. This is different. This feels different than it was before – _better_ , though he’d never thought that could be possible. He lets himself go deeper, more, as Patrick's moans grow.   

“Okay?” Pete asks, desperate. His own cock is throbbing against Patrick’s.

Patrick makes a noise that sounds affirmative, so Pete removes his fingers and reaches shaking hands to the condom. Patrick helps while Pete’s hands stutter frustratingly, and they pull it over the thick hardness of Pete’s cock together.  

Pete meets Patrick’s eyes over sweaty skin. He sees a young man who’s skinnier, more confident, a bit of mess now, but still the same. That kid Pete fell through the door of a hotel room with seven years ago is still there, in every look and touch and smile. Pete will combust with the way he feels for him.

Patrick eases himself onto the stiffness of Pete’s cock, and they both gasp through hot breaths together. He moves as Pete thrusts and it’s never felt more perfect, more like it should be. They let themselves kiss, needy, between themselves, and Pete’s hands roam the length of Patrick’s thick cock risen between their stomachs.  

They make love in the middle of the wreckage of their band, in between a fractured past and uncertain, hopeful futures. In a purgatory of long moans and slick sweat. Pete gets lost in Patrick’s murmurs, breaths and skin, can feel himself coming apart under the weight of the amount of love he has for him. 

Pete’s world shatters and comes undone, his galaxy, the entire fucking universe and every universe that mirrors it, it all comes undone and realigns as he shakes through the aching pleasure and comes. “Love you,” he gasps, the words he’s wanted to say while doing this for way too long, and immediately Patrick is quick to follow with a gasp of Pete's name. Pete feels the sticky wetness of it against his chest and stomach, feels Patrick shaking on top of him before he damn near collapses against Pete’s chest, breaths and heartbeats loud and pulsing alongside one another.

Pete lets himself relax. He can’t remember the last time he allowed himself that in Patrick’s arms. Even when they were frequently a mess of skin and sweat between bedsheets, they couldn’t – it was too secret, it was not enough, it was not always allowed or advised. He closes his eyes for a second, letting himself marvel in the feeling of Patrick lying against him.

The quiet is broken by Patrick only a few minutes later. “We should do this again,” he says softly, and Pete’s heart almost stops, jolting visions of hotel room hand jobs and years of miscalculated love making.

He feels himself tense up entirely as he murmurs, “This?”

Pete dares to glance down and meet riptide eyes, and Patrick pauses, smiles, and says, “What if we do this, and this time we don’t date other people?” He swallows from where his head rests at Pete’s shoulder. There’s a warm and hopeful smile on his face that Pete can’t help but read into. “What if we do this, and you were like… my boyfriend?”

Pete feels something burst in his chest at that word. Boyfriend. Simple, not enough for what Patrick is, and yet all he’s wanted to call him at the same time. “Yeah?”

“I want to do this for real,” Patrick says, shifting so they’re face to face. “All of it. Do you want… Do you want this…? With me?” Along with the hope, there’s a spark of fear in his eyes. It’s tiny, but it’s there and Pete wants to put it out forever and never see it ever again.

“Patrick…” he murmurs. “I’ve wanted this “for real” for seven years – fuck, no. Longer. I was half way in love with you by our third fucking practice.”

“I love you,” Patrick says softly. “I never told you soon enough. When it mattered.”

Pete shakes his head. “It wasn’t… Things were weird.” That’s putting it lightly. Pete brushes a gentle kiss against Patrick’s lips. “I love you too. I love you so much.” He admits quietly, “I just… I don’t wanna ruin you. I don’t wanna ruin this.”

At that, all Patrick does is smile. “You won’t,” he says with a confidence that fills Pete up. “You can’t.” There’s a warm gleam in his eyes that speaks of a future Pete had thought was dust.

For the first time, he knows they’ll wake up next to each other tomorrow morning in the knowledge that this is forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! this is the first multi-chapter story i've like, ever finished lol. it's not that long obviously, but... still meaningful for me. anyway, i hope you enjoyed. comments and kudos would make my day. you can also catch me on tumblr @1833outboy and [reblog](http://1833outboy.tumblr.com/post/178700979971/spiral-of-shame-1833outboy-phancon-fall-out) the fic over there if you'd like.
> 
> (i posted the first few paragraphs of this chapter to my tumblr a few weeks ago. just in case you'd read that and recognised it from somewhere, haha. i only plagiarised myself i swear.)


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